Fix The Leak

I was sixteen years old. I was driving my Chrysler Laser.

I was proud to drive it. My dad bought it

for me. I remember him buying it for five hundred dollars,

but he would get pissed when I said five hundred.

He said it was eight.

I remember five. Car wasn't very pretty, but that didn't

stop me from being proud of it. That didn't stop

me from telling Jamie Messmer that I would take her

to the mall, the north Woods Mall.

We're gonna go shop him.

But first we got to stop buy real quick my work.

We got to stop by because they're building a little

shed at.

The work and I'm supposed to look at it.

This is at Petrest Cemetery and Cremation Service. If you

recall those of you who know your pastor's personal history.

We got to stop by us, and now you need

to stay in the car because I don't want you

getting out. I didn't want her to know too much

about where I work, and so we stopped by real quick.

I'm gonna tell you something what happened to me.

Now, I've only been driving this car as a stick shift, too,

so I'm already a little bit clunky on the clutch,

popping the clutch a little nervous. Jamie was kind of

hot to me back then, before I knew what beautiful

really looked like.

This car starts, it's the worst.

Thing that could happen to It's only about thirty five

minutes from Monk's Corner to the mall, but it's raining.

It's a very dramatic story now, very traumatic. It's the

scar that I haven't ever shown anybody before car starts,

and so I turned up the radio. Maybe she wouldn't

notice how hard the car was shaken if I made

it louder in the car. And we got to a

stoplight and the guy said, hey, man, your back left

tire is almost completely flat, and that made me. I

was kind of a relief because you can fix that,

even though I didn't know how to change to the

spear tire.

But it was enough to get to the mall and

enough to figure it out.

But it's weird to me how he could see something

from the outside that I couldn't see from the inside.

And when we got when we finally parked the car,

I went and looked at the tire and he was right.

I mean, I didn't get out of the cart to

stop like, because we were almost there by that time,

and we got there, it wasn't very comfortable right on

into the mall parking lot. And sure enough, it wasn't

real loud, but if you've been down and.

Got close to it, you could hear show them what

it probably sounded like, bulb. It wasn't that allowed.

It was constant, because if it had sounded like or

something like that, you know, I may have even heard

it while I was driving, But it didn't sound like that.

It sounded like.

Because because well at that point the nail was still

in it. Now, when we finally took the nail out,

then it went because I had just been to a

place where they were building a shed, and anytime you're

in a place where there's a lot of construction, you

have to be careful where you drive. Anytime you're in

a church where there's a lot of growth, anytime when

you're in an opportunity. Remember I told you they were

building a shed at Petres Cemetery and Cremation Service, And

so when I stopped by before I went to the mall,

I wasn't careful to see what was lying around because

of the construction. When I was driving into work this morning,

I wasn't going to teach Steph Rawley.

I was going to slip in, but I heard a sound.

I'm learning to listen.

I see pictures like when God gave me the visual

of nails for the sermon this weekend. I knew I

had it because it was no longer just a principle.

It was an image that people can take with them.

And I figured, if we get up and expostulate for

an hour on the virtues of forgiveness, or show a

clip from the Passion of the Christ appealing to people's sentimentality,

that if Jesus suffered the lacerations on his back for you,

why can't you put up with your mother in law?

That we might get a short term response from them.

Sinnamon always creates a short term response. But what I

wanted to teach was more systematic, and the more I

got into the thought, the more powerful it became. Because

I remember one time asking a great minister, what's the

most important thing for me to teach my team at

this young stage. He said, you'd better teach them how

to live with offenses, because you.

Can't avoid them.

And the success of this ministry will depend on your

ability to live with offenses if it's growing, because the

more growth that God gives to the ministry, exactly, the

more nails, the more things move around.

The more that's happening.

Come on, y'all, I'm teaching good for an unprepared pastor.

And I heard a sound today. I didn't see an image,

but I heard a sound today. I just heard a

I heard how it happens, not just in the big

things from when we were fourteen, or our first marriage,

or not having a dad when we grew up. I

heard a do it real soft like you did before.

I didn't hear a blowout. I heard a leak. I

heard that that's where your joy gets stolen, stolen, stolen

in the leak. And when leaders leak, like when I

allow myself to be too east Celie, offended by one

one thing that someone says or what they don't say

that they should have said, I lose the air. I

lose the I mean I could, I could get Jamie

to the mall, but I couldn't get her home, and uh,

it stops your progress. And I mean you can ride

for a little while like that, and the craziest thing

is you'll start imagining that you have to change the engine.

You'll start thinking this is going to be a thousand

dollars a pair. Oh god, I need a new job,

I need a new car, I need a new wife.

No, you just need to.

Fix the leak. If you can learn to fix the leak,

you won't always be running around trading in for a

newer model, and you won't be riding around. It's all

right turning up the volume, trying to drown out the dysfunction.

If you fix the leak,